This is devoted to those common problems facing a GM. How do you get enough players? What do you do when there is a bad atmosphere within the group?

Everyone, please post those tips and tricks that come to mind. There is no one true solution. Different GMs, different solutions.

On one of the adventurers' many journeys through the lands, they one day enter a very strange village surrounded by a palisade. Therein all villagers seem to be sleeping, their hair long and flowing and their nails ever growing. Snow has settled on the land and the few found outdoors are covered in a thin layer of powdery white snow. Nothing can be done to awaken these mysterious sleepers and there seems to be no escaping this village either.

Then the night falls...